Denise M Taylor

Writing Consultant I Editor I Proofreader

Claude Monet (1846-1926) painted water in its many forms and moods—a rough and animated sea, a misty and mysterious river, a still and reflective pond, and crisp, white snow. Monet began his water garden at his home in Giverny in 1893, and over time the plants in and around the pond grew and merged, softened and framed. In Monet’s painting, […]

Categories: Musings on Art

Barbara Hepworth’s garden in St Ives, Cornwall, is small and walled, but there are foregrounds and views which are framed by the ‘holes’ that pierce most of her sculptures. This place of art echoes Hepworth’s philosophy as an artist: “to infuse the formal perfection of geometry with the vital grace of nature”.  A bird’s-eye view of Barbara’s ‘back-yard’ would be […]

My parents had a Constable hanging on the wall of our family home for years . . . reproductions of Constable’s idyllic English landscapes like ‘The Hay Wain’ were popular after WWII.  John Constable (1776-1837) painted ‘Study of ‘A boat passing a lock’’ (owned by the National Gallery of Victoria) between 1823 and 1826: the sluice gates of Flatford lock […]

Paradoxically, works of art are wordless meditations on life which highlight the inadequacy of language and frequently testify to the ideas of the sublime and the beautiful. Two months ago I was on a return visit to London’s National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. I first saw the sizeable (292 x 246.4 cm) George Stubbs painting, ‘Whistlejacket’ (c.1762; image below), two […]

Categories: Musings on Art

Leaves were falling and London was wearing a mantle of fog on the morning of Monday 22 October 2012. Autumn leaves brought to mind two exquisite paintings, ‘Autumn Leaves’ (1856) and ‘Mariana’ (1851), by John Everett Millais, one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB). So it made sense to head for the Tate Gallery, situated on the banks of […]